


Rain Dance

by Blame Canada (OneHitWondersAnonymous)



Series: South Park Drabble Bomb: April 2017 [1]
Category: South Park
Genre: Aged-Up Character(s), Dancing in the Rain, Drabble, Implied/Referenced Character Death, M/M, Old Age, One Shot, Original Character(s), Rain, like really aged up
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-19
Updated: 2017-04-19
Packaged: 2018-10-20 21:46:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,071
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10671417
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OneHitWondersAnonymous/pseuds/Blame%20Canada
Summary: Growing old had never been something he’d ever thought about; not at age ten, age twenty, or even at age thirty. When age forty hit and his bones began to ache more each passing day, it suddenly did not seem so impossible of a concept. Then, he hit age fifty. Then age sixty. He’d just reached sixty-five a few months ago, and he wondered if he’d reach seventy too.Submission for the first day's prompt of the South Park Drabble Bomb: Rainstorm.





	Rain Dance

**Author's Note:**

> Welcome to my first piece for my own project that I will shamelessly plug here, called the South Park Drabble Bomb! It's a little challenge involving five days of prompts once a month to write for. Please consider checking it out and contributing sometime!

Growing old had never been something he’d ever thought about; not at age ten, age twenty, or even at age thirty. When age forty hit and his bones began to ache more each passing day, it suddenly did not seem so impossible of a concept. Then, he hit age fifty. Then age sixty. He’d just reached sixty-five a few months ago, and he wondered if he’d reach seventy too.

The moisture in the air made his joints creak and moan in ways that were a mystery, though he was sure modern medicine could tell him if he cared. The sky was opening up to its new springtime showers, and with it came the return of the general soreness that a body well used experienced. He liked the sound of it when the raindrops drummed against the rooftops, back when his hearing was good enough to reach longer distances. Now he heard only the faintest of pitter-pattering, paired with the painting of tiny puddles onto the railing of his porch. Specks of dirt from the hanging plants lining the awning collected in the rainwater over chipped white paint. He reached his hand out to it, and the water felt cold against his leathery skin. A raindrop fell square between the calloused old knuckles of his hand, and he withdrew it to shake it off. He let out a deep breath that let all his muscles collapse into themselves, and he struggled to find the energy to breathe them back out. He was growing tired.

His husband liked to joke that he had become a reverse old man. He hated to admit that he’d been right. Having children made him soft, and a second generation beyond his own kids only strengthened the want to hold a little gentler, speak a little softer. It seemed the older he got the smaller they became, and when there was a little one staring up at him from the ground while he read a storybook, he’d never felt so full.

He could see his husband’s eyes in them. One had his nose, too, the poor thing. He chuckled to himself at the thought. There was something beautiful about the seas of green that lived so vividly in his memories being reanimated on the faces of babies. He had to wonder if his husband would have been mesmerized by the remnants of his blues, had they chosen a different path. He loved to compliment them the most, said there were webs in them and scales like sapphire dragons that he reckoned no longer breathed fire.

He leaned back in his old white wicker chair and let out a heavy sigh as his spine relaxed over its cushions. Turning sixty-five without him had not been easy, but no day had been easy since.

The crunching of gravel mixed with the sound of rain. From around the corner came a small red SUV that he recognized as his youngest daughter’s. It took him a moment to remember that she’d mentioned coming by for a visit. He smiled as she waved through the windshield when she turned the keys.

She hurried to the side of the car and he watched her intently, remembering all the times he’d done the same in torrential rains to pull her from a car seat himself. However, this rain was not torrential, and everything seemed a little more picturesque when she did it with deft hands that she had most certainly not inherited from her father. When the door to the car opened a peal of laughter struck his chest.

His granddaughter jumped from the car and giggled at the splashing her rain boots made and affection warmed his heart from across the lawn. She stomped her feet a few times despite her mother’s scolding. He scoffed to himself, before she could hear;  _ ‘let the girl have fun once or twice,’ _ he complained. She’d grown stricter since her divorce had left her fearful. His ex son-in-law still sent him Christmas and birthday cards in the mail.

“Papa!” The little one exclaimed, and she hopped up the steps to tug at his aged hand. “Come play in the rain!” He laughed at her and made eye contact with his daughter, who shook her head in halfhearted disdain.

“She’s been loving the rain lately. I have no idea why. Some cartoon?” She looked lost and he excused her with a wave of his hand. He didn’t care the reason. His granddaughter’s eyes were a dazzling green, the same as his husband’s, and in moments like these when she looked at him with such unsullied excitement he had no words to speak.

“You want to play in the rain?” He finally asked through a strained throat, and she nodded excitedly, shaking his hand when she tugged at it with both of her own. They just barely fit around the width of his palm. Her tiny fingernails pressed into his skin in a familiar bite, like the trimmed ones that used to quiver against his knuckles. “Well then, I’d better find some boots.” She squealed, and though his daughter looked exhausted, she looked happy. If things stayed just like this, he thought, he would have no need to worry for them later.

They stomped through the mud with heavy steps and made messes of their boots to reach the center of the lawn. “Let’s dance,” he said, and he took both of her tiny hands in his. His shaky palms swallowed them. The water splashed up from under them, and though he could only stand to do it for a short time, he twisted her back and forth, back and forth on his feet. She giggled and hopped around him and threw her hands up in the air, and he looked to the sky to thank it. He thanked the sky, he thanked God, and he thanked all that may lie in between. When he looked back down into beautiful green eyes, he thanked Tweek too.

When his girls left and he hobbled into his living room to rest, he sank into his chair with a smile that hadn’t truly graced his lips since he’d become a widower. With the familiar light of the old television set flickering as his nighttime lamp, Craig closed his eyes and fell asleep, dreams alive with the hope that his family would take her out to dance in the rain when he left, too. 


End file.
